The San Francisco 49ers, in a loss last year against the New Orleans Saints, turned the ball over four times and failed to take it away even once.

The talk from outside the locker room and even some inside was about the charity the 49ers offense extended to the Saints.

Greg Manusky, perhaps as few men so artfully can, explained it another way when addressing his players the next day.

“You guys are all bitching about the obvious,” said Manusky, then the 49ers defensive coordinator. “Why don’t you (bleeping) take it away?”

Oh, what fun he would have had with the Chargers in 2010.

The Chargers took the ball away just 23 times last season, tied for ninth-fewest in the NFL. That total is even less impressive when taking into account almost half (11) of those takeaways came in two games (Jacksonville and Indianapolis). That means that in their other 14 games, the Chargers managed 12 takeaways.

In 10 of their 16 games, the Chargers lost the turnover battle. Just five times did they win it. During a four-game stretch in October, they tied a team record by not creating a single turnover.

Perhaps most telling (astonishing?) is that the Chargers had just four takeaways in the team’s losses.

They knew it was bad. They didn’t know it was that bad.

“Four?” safety Eric Weddle said, wide-eyed. “In seven games?”

Yes, the dirty little secret about last year’s 9-7 record — hidden beneath the ugliness of a blundering special teams and an offense that too often gave away games — was the defense’s culpability in rarely helping the Chargers steal games.

“Turnovers are the difference in most games,” linebacker Shaun Phillips said. “Most teams, most games are won or lost with the turnover ratio.”

Indeed. Over the past four NFL seasons, teams that won the turnover battle won 80 percent of the time. In that span, the Chargers have gone 26-2 when winning the turnover battle. That includes 2007, when they led the NFL with 48 takeaways and a plus-24 turnover ratio. In fact, the Chargers were 10-0 that year when winning the turnover battle, 7-0 in 2009 and 5-0 last season.

“That just lets you know,” Phillips said. “… Last year, we had opportunity where we didn’t take care of the ball and we didn’t create turnovers, which was, oddly enough, a non-playoff year.”

Phillips’ attempt at irony aside, all this is why Sunday night in Dallas was so significant.

After more than three weeks of Manusky and his assistants mentioning takeaways in some fashion in virtually every meeting, conducting turnover drills to start every practice and harping on taking the ball throughout those practices, the Chargers went out and got three takeaways in a 20-7 victory over the Cowboys.

“You respond to the head coach, your position coach and your defensive coordinator,” Manusky said. “… I think if they hear it, keep on hearing it, and hearing it, and hearing it, and hearing it … maybe they keep on focusing on it during practice, and focusing on it during the game, and hopefully good things happen.”